


Secrets and Lies

by azephirin



Series: Charleston [23]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 1000-3000 words, 1000-5000 Words, Charleston, Closeted Character, Female Characters, Female In Command, Female Protagonist, Gen, Marriage, Semihomemade Fic, South Carolina, Workplace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-11
Updated: 2010-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-07 04:20:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azephirin/pseuds/azephirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the right of refusal is exercised and a truth is revealed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Secrets and Lies

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer**: All your Winchesters are not belong to me. Not that there are many of them in this fic anyway.
> 
> **Author's note:** This takes place in the same verse as all the other [Charleston fics](http://archiveofourown.org/series/2191), sometime in the unspecified future (but will make much more sense if you've read [Underneath Your Clothes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/61357)).

From her office, Lissa hears the bells on the front door, but she doesn't look up: Emily will greet them, assist them if they want to try something off the rack, call her to the front if they want to schedule a design consultation or a fitting. (Emily keeps the appointment book, but Lissa likes to talk to clients first to make sure they want something she's willing and has time to do. She'll make anything from wedding gowns to jeans—a short, curvy woman who swore nothing in the stores fit her—but the day Lissa made her "no prom dresses" declaration was maybe the happiest of her professional life.)

In a few minutes, Emily's head appears in the doorway. She's dressed in her usual impeccable pastel twin set, pearls lying demurely on her collarbone. "Can you come to the front?"

"In a second. Consultation or fitting?"

"Consultation. Wedding dress. But—" Emily pauses, and Lissa's eyebrows go up. "They were hoping you could meet with them now."

Emily has been invaluable in nearly all respects—she's organized and friendly, with a good head for both business and design, and Lissa hates that Sam was the one to suggest hiring her—but her manners and desire to please sometimes get the better of her.

Lissa sighs. "If you're going to have your own shop"—and Lissa suspects that Emily will, one day, and dearly hopes that she will not be a competitor—"you're going to have to learn to tell people no."

"They were really nice about it?" Emily tries.

"New customers or returning?"

"New."

"I'm serious," Lissa says. "One day we'll close a little early, and I'll teach you how to be mean to people. It's a useful life skill. Tell them I'll be out in a minute—I just want to finish this seam."

Emily leaves, and Lissa gets to a stopping point as best she can and then goes out front. Three people are standing at the counter, browsing through her portfolios; Lissa guesses them to be a bride-to-be, her fiancé, and her mother. She introduces herself, and says, "I understand you'd like to have a wedding dress made?"

"Yes!" The bride is all blue eyes and a big smile, golden blond hair, and at least ten years—probably more like fifteen—younger than her husband. She's earnest, shining like a new penny—the description that comes to Lissa's mind is _freshly washed_. "I'm Annie Bowen, and this is my mother, Susan Bowen, and my fiancé, Prentice Maybank."

Lissa usually pays little attention to the grooms, if they are even present, during conversations like these, but something in the name sticks at her. He's unremarkable-looking, brown hair, an inch or so shy of six feet—about Lissa's height. Maybank is a respectable old Charleston name, but Lissa's dealt with a number of respectable old Charleston names, and probably some other Maybanks—likely that's why it's familiar.

"The initial consultation for a wedding dress is at least an hour," Lissa says. "I have some openings early next week, and if you have any ideas or photos on hand that you could email me—"

"I have to be back in Columbia then," the fiancé interrupts, "so we really need to do it today. Sunday latest."

His accent is all South Carolina, but he clearly didn't get the manners Emily did.

Lissa's first instinct is to tell him that she really doesn't care when he needs to do it, but it's an instinct she's learned to quash over time. "I have no openings today, Friday, or Saturday, and we're closed Sundays and Mondays. I do have some availability early Tuesday."

"I can't leave my paper just to come to Charleston for a dress."

Lissa makes the connection just as Annie Bowen, embarking on what Lissa hopes will not be a lifetime of recovering from her husband's gaffes, says, "What Prentice means is—"

This time it's Lissa who interrupts. "It seems I miscalculated my time. I won't actually be able to make this dress."

Emily, standing in front of the computer with the calendar open, looks perplexed, but doesn't argue—it's Lissa's workload, after all.

"But the wedding isn't until next April," protests Mrs. Bowen.

"Unfortunately I won't be available. I'm sure you'll be able to find another dressmaker; there are several others in the city."

"But everybody recommended you!" says Annie Bowen, dismayed.

"We'll pay you as much as you want," adds Prentice Maybank.

"I'm afraid I'm not available," Lissa repeats, then looks at him directly and smiles. "I believe we have a friend in common. Dr. Christian Nicholson?"

Prentice Maybank blushes bright red just as his fiancée says, "I didn't know you knew him! I met him last month at a fundraiser the Junior League did for the hospital. What a sweet man! And a very good doctor, from what everybody said."

Prentice Maybank's mouth is tight. "I haven't talked to Chris in a while."

Lissa imagines a wolf smiling at its prey as she says, "My husband's brother is his partner. If you'll excuse me, I need to get back to my work. Prentice, Annie, best wishes for your life together."

They leave—Mrs. Bowen, then Annie, then Prentice, who turns at the door, looking angry, as if to leave a parting shot, but Emily waves and he turns back without a word. Lissa watches them get into a Mercedes parked on the street, but it's not until the car has pulled into traffic that Emily ventures, "I don't want to pry, but…"

"Why did I just turn down a job that would have paid our rent for a year?"

Emily nods.

"First, because the marriage isn't going to last, and it's bad luck. Second, because Prentice Maybank is a dipshit and a coward and a worthless excuse for a human being, and also a right-wing hypocrite who writes crappy editorials." Emily still looks confused, and now mildly alarmed too, and Lissa goes on, "You've met Dean, my brother-in-law, right?"

"Oh, sure. Big black car, leather jacket. He's very nice."

Lissa laughs. "I don't know if 'nice' is the word I'd use, but, yeah, that's him. The man I mentioned, Chris—Christian—Nicholson, is his partner. As in, they live together."

"Okay," Emily says, clearly still puzzled.

"Before you moved here, before Sam and Dean moved here, Chris was with Prentice Maybank. I don't know for exactly how long, but it was definitely a couple of years."

Emily stares. "Did people know?"

"I'm not sure. I'm guessing Annie and Susan Bowen don't, unless the Maybank fortune is big enough that it doesn't matter. I had just started my own shop when Chris and Prentice would have been together, so I didn't have the clientele I do now and people didn't feel free to drop gossip bombs while I was measuring them."

Emily shakes her head. "I don't understand why they do that. It's as though they think we don't have ears."

Lissa says, "Yeah, no kidding. I sometimes think my rates for those people are just blackmail fees. Anyway, about Chris and Prentice, I don't think it was public knowledge, but it wasn't a hundred percent a secret."

"It was like that with my uncle," Emily says quietly, suddenly, and Lissa looks at her in surprise. "People sort of—whispered about it. I was young, so nobody said anything directly, and when he got sick, they said he had the flu. Really badly. For a long time. And I wasn't allowed to see him, and then he died."

"I'm sorry," Lissa says. She's not sure what else you say to that.

"Me too. But I'm not sorry that Chris Nichols—"

"Nicholson."

"I'm not sorry that Chris Nicholson got a better boyfriend, and I'm not sorry you told that jackass to get lost." Then Emily covers her mouth, as though she's just let loose a string of curse words, and Lissa can't help laughing. "I am sorry for Annie Bowen, though," Emily adds. "Even if she does know. Either way it's bad, and that guy is seriously a jerk." Then she seems to compose herself, adjusting the sleeves on her cardigan, arranging her pearls so that the clasp is in the back, and turning back to the computer. "You should call Sam and tell him."

Which Lissa thinks is some kind of Southern-girl code for _I have revealed too much of myself and would like to end this conversation before I say anything else that might make me a not-nice person_. "Good idea," says Lissa, and starts for the back. "And if anybody else shows up wanting a same-day consultation—"

"I'll tell them no," Emily says, with the tiniest of smiles.


End file.
